Evil Geniuses defeat Vega Squadron in Captains Draft 3.0 Finals

North America’s top Dota 2 team EG faced off against Russia’s Vega Squadron in the Finals of DotaCinema’s Captains Draft 3.0 tournament, emerging victorious with a score of 3:1. EG took home $ 35,000, adding yet another dominant performance to their growing list of 1st-3rd place finishes over the past year, including their victory at last year’s International.

Game one was fairly back-and-forth until Vega decided to take Roshan at 22 minutes. Even though they managed to kill it right before EG got there, EG convincingly won the ensuing teamfight, scoring 3 kills to Vega’s 0. EG increased their lead for the rest of the game, ultimately getting the win by 34 minutes.

Game two featured a very greedy lineup from Vega, including Anti-Mage, Tiny, and Juggernaut. As expected, EG focused on forcing Vega into 5v5 fights to make use of their superior teamfight lineup. Despite this, Vega took the lead early on, and killed the mid Tier 3 tower at 25 minutes with a 19:8 lead in kills. But EG fought back, making excellent use of Medusa’s ultimate against a heavy melee team, in combination with Enigma’s Black Hole and Sumail’s great Slardar play. Despite being neck and neck on the scoreboard, EG took the game by 43 minutes.

Game three featured a somewhat unconventional lineup from EG that included Beastmaster and Terrorblade. Vega’s much more traditional lineup punished EG from early on, securing a 10:0 lead by 15 minutes. Arteezy tried his best by split pushing lanes on Terrorblade and actually made the game competitive by taking the mid rax, but EG never recovered from the early game. Vega took the match by 53 minutes.

Game four featured another unconventional team lineup, but this time for Vega – they took Spectre and 4 support heroes. While not terrible on paper, their Earthshaker mid didn’t do too well against Sumail’s Ember Spirit, not managing to secure a lot of farm or have a serious impact as a ganker. Meanwhile, Spectre never had enough space to farm heavily, and EG’s Omniknight pick was absolutely amazing to counter Vega’s teamfight and AOE-heavy lineup. EG easily took the game by 35 minutes, securing a 3:1 victory to take first place in the tournament.

With Captains Draft finished, the next big Dota 2 tournament to watch is the Shanghai Major, taking place between March 2 and 6.